


Beneath the Proud Veins

by Companionable



Category: The Yogscast
Genre: Canon Typical Violence -- Blood Magic, M/M, Manipulative Behaviour, Memory Loss, Mildly Dubious Consent, Power Imbalances
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-09
Updated: 2014-09-09
Packaged: 2018-02-16 18:41:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2280525
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Companionable/pseuds/Companionable
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"'Strife.' It’s not a question, not a greeting, but an accusation. </p><p>'Kirin. Pleasure to see you, as always,' he says, hoping to convey with a flat, toneless voice just how pleasurable it is."</p><p>The Storm Sage visits Strife Solutions and outlives his welcome.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Beneath the Proud Veins

**Author's Note:**

> The work tags are all very mild, but I thought I would warn for them just to be sure. My first work with Kirin, and I'm still figuring out his character having only seen a bit of his stuff. I'm also behind on literally everything, so I'm sure that doesn't help. Constructive feedback always welcomed and appreciated.

Will has a visitor. Normally he is heralded and surprises are difficult for him, but Will hasn’t exactly been... attentive, of late. He doesn’t notice the clouds form outside his window, doesn’t take in the gentle rumble of thunder that grows increasingly near and increasingly loud. In fact, he’s unaware of any guests until his current one makes himself known with a word.

“Strife.” It’s not a question, not a greeting, but an accusation. Will knows exactly what it’s implying.

“Kirin. Pleasure to see you, as always,” he says, hoping to convey with a flat, toneless voice just how pleasurable it is. He doesn’t even look up from his task. "I’m not sticking around. I’m just stopping by to pick up some things, and then I’ll be leaving. You should do the same.”

Kirin Dave sighs, hugely, far too full of exasperation to be from anyone but an immortal being. “Leaving for where, William? Is this not your home?” He turns, his sage robes flaring with the motion, creating arcs of static electricity in their wake as he gestures to the entire room, the whole building. “Did you not spend precious time and materials to craft this dwelling? And yet you are barely here. Why?” It’s still not a question.

It pricks uncomfortably at him, this pseudo-concern, this facsimile of human emotion. A veritable god does not generally have time to care about the emotions of mortals, let alone their living habits. “When did you suddenly become my mother, Storm Sage?” Will asks instead, knowing a deflection when one falls out of his mouth, but finds himself lacking the energy to care.

There’s an empty silence that follows, and finally Will hears the accompanying storm, the roll of ominous thunder punctuating the pause. Kirin sighs again, easier this time, and turns to prod at one of Will’s machines, the power-gauges nearing overload at his proximity. “How’s Parvis getting along?” he offers, an invitation to talk about something else that Will is only too glad to take.

“He’s coming along. He’s let me work on his frankly atrocious sorting system, and I’ve been doing some more decorating. Parvis is... less-so interested in the interior decor of Castle Parv but, well, I can’t help myself, and he lets me run wild.” Will returns to the work he was doing before Kirin arrived, packing a few necessary tools and sundries into an Ender Pack connected to a chest in Castle Parv. “Well, and he’s been working on some larger spells, finding trouble wherever it lurks. The witches are barely even enough to sustain him anymore, he’s talking about finding a more powerful source. I mean, what’s more powerful than witch’s blood, I don’t kno--”

“The blood of a thrall is, William.” The interruption startles him, and Will looks up to see that same concern welling up in the demigod’s eyes. It must be fake, it has to be fake. Nothing out of this man’s mouth should be trusted. “You can’t be that oblivious, you’re too smart for that...” he says, though quieter now, less something for Will to hear and respond to, more something spoken to himself in disbelief.

There’s something still niggling at him, running like a current under his skin. It burns, and it frightens him, but Will can’t put words to it. “Smart for what? Oblivious to what?” The burning turns furious, and Kirin’s presence suddenly feels hostile. “What do you want here, Kirin Dave?”

The sage takes a step forward, and another, the smell of petrichor and ozone hitting Will’s nose like a wall as Kirin steps into his personal space. Frustrated and angry, Will turns back to the chest he was raiding for items, only to be briefly blinded by a flash of white lightning that gradually fades into Kirin’s shape. Before Will can take a startled step backward, Kirin has a hand around his wrist that pulls at his shirt, rolling the sleeve back, up his arm. Will manages to struggle for only a moment before he feels a shock run through his system that locks his arm in place, frozen in Kirin’s grasp. “William, tell me where you got this,” he demands, his finger running up the side of his forearm, parallel to a deep, red gash.

Struggling for only a moment, Will remembers. “Out in the farm. I was weeding and I let go of my trowel and cut myself.” The question bugs him, his hesitancy to answer more so. “Why?”

Instead of answering, like the infuriating bastard he is, Kirin merely runs the tip of his fingernail along another scar, this one along his wrist. “And this one?”

Another few moments to remember, but he’s less confident when he answers this time. “I... I was crafting, and a blade slipped out of my hand.” When was the last time he crafted a sword anyway? What could he possibly have needed one for?

“What about this one?” Kirin isn’t even looking at him now, rolling the sleeve further up Will’s arm, indicating another mark on the inside of his bicep.

The answers are taking longer to come to his head, seem flimsier and less reliable when he bends them into words. “That was... that was a skeleton? In the mines, I got shot and it left a mark...”

Kirin only hums after that, neither affirmative or negative, as he grabs Will’s other wrist, rolls up his other sleeve, and runs his delicate fingers gently along more and more scars. Marks on his fingertips, on his wrist, running up the length of his forearm, in the crease of his elbow, crosshatching on his biceps... and...

When Kirin’s hand slides from his clothed shoulder down to his chest, and his face turns more grim, Will knows exactly what he’d find under the material of his shirt, his vest, if he looked. Shaken by the careful scrutiny, Will lets the first emotion he feels take him and gets angry, defensive. He swats Kirin’s hand away from him, weaker than he intended and not simply because of the shock Kirin had given him before. “So what? Who cares, Kirin? I get into a lot of fights and I come out of it with scars, what do you care?”

“Oh, William...” Kirin says, quiet and... regretful? “He’s had you for so much longer than I imagined...”

“Who’s had me?” He surges forward to curl his fists in Kirin’s robes, the material bunching in his fingers, and Will knows that means the demigod is _allowing_ himself to be touched, to be manhandled, and that’s even more infuriating. “What the hell are you on about, Storm Sage!?”

He only shakes his head, slowly and with his eyes closed, like he’s disappointed that he even bothered. “For you to be this hostile, he must’ve really worked at it with you. He’s planted a seed of doubt against me so strong... I can only imagine why.” When he looks up to meet his gaze, Kirin’s eyes are frosted with that strange, blue-white glow that seems to surround him wherever he goes, and for one true and genuine moment, Will is scared. Kirin’s hand closes, cool and strong, around one of Will’s wrists, sending a jolt through his entire body. “Then again,” he says with what sounds like pity, “you could never say no to Parvis, could you?”

Like a curtain being raised or a dense fog burning off in the afternoon sun, Will’s mind opens. A flood of memories takes him by surprise, and knocks him back as if he had been punched. Turbulent and terrifying, flashes of half-forgotten rituals and misremembered conversations tear through Will’s brain like a hack-saw, splitting him open. Parvis mentioning using his blood as an off-hand joke, Will not knowing why he agrees. Parv apologizing for using his blood while he was asleep, Will finding he doesn’t really mind. Will all but moving into Castle Parv, half-waking up in the middle of the night to find Parvis gleefully drawing on his bare chest (Will having the space of mind not to ask whose blood he’s drawing with). Parvis beckoning him to the altar, Will practically running, salivating, to get there as fast as possible. Parvis’ voice, sweet and sly and laced with so much poison, “You’re my sweet pet, Strifey.” Will’s lust-soaked reply, “I’m all yours, Master.”

When Will returns to himself--or when the world returns to him, he’s not sure which--he hears his own voice tapering out from a scream. His hands clutch desperately at his temples, and his eyes feel blown. Out of energy, and out of breath, Will lets his arms fall to his sides without much resistance. His eyes focus and he sees Kirin kneeling in front of him. “What have I done?” Will manages in little more than a whisper.

Strangely, Kirin smiles. He reaches out a hand, one that Will finds difficult to focus his eyes on, and brushes the tips of his fingers against the skin of Will’s cheek. “Nothing that can’t be fixed, dear William,” he says sweetly, then presses the full breadth of his palm to Will’s face.

In the moment that sits empty between them, Will relaxes, only for his veins to come alive again inside him. This time, however, it’s not the heat and discomfort of the blood magic tied to him; it’s the shivering, chilled touch of electricity that pumps through him, his veins lighting up blue to match Kirin’s eyes. Though the lightning in his bloodstream should be frightening, Will instead finds it fascinating to watch his arteries pulse with the Storm Sage’s special brand of magic, feels his heart beating inhumanly slow without any discomfort. “What... what did you just do?”

Kirin’s fingers slip down the curve of his cheek to his neck, his skin lighting up like a thunderhead with forks of lightning under his touch. “A simple displacement spell. Wherever your skin shall split, blood from my veins shall pour. The change in power output should be minimal enough that Parvis will not notice, and it will free you from his bonds.” There’s a brief hesitation, before Kirin adds, “That is, if you want to be free of his bonds.”

It feels strange to look at a demigod with exasperation, but Will thinks he can get used to it. “Shouldn’t you have asked that _before_ casting displacement spells on me?” He won’t tell Kirin that there’s no force in Minecraftia that could make him refuse this gift, but he does wonder... “What do you get out of this, Kirin?”

He steps away from Will, his hands clasped behind his back when he turns away to pace the room. “Nothing. I simply wanted you safe from the Blood Mage’s clutches.”

“Bullshit,” Will spits, and Kirin tosses a bemused smirk over his shoulder.

With another flash of lightning and crack of thunder, Kirin is back in front of Will and pressing him back against the chest he’d been using to support himself. “Never you mind about the repayment, William. I’ll return to collect eventually...” he says slowly and gently, cupping his face and tilting it up, static electricity singing through Will’s skin as he meets Kirin’s gaze with an admirable amount of determination. But the demigod merely giggles, cracking a genuine and honest smile before pressing his lips to Will’s cheek in a kiss that zaps him almost violently.

Huh.

“Enjoy the rest of your day, Strife.”


End file.
